


With Feet Opposite

by Blue_Savannah



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Introspection, POV Second Person, Pining Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott's Green Dress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29669106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Savannah/pseuds/Blue_Savannah
Summary: “Well, what d’you think?” Robin asks, cutting off your confusion at the knees. (Knee, singular.) She’s twisting and turning in front of you, even more beautiful close up, all creamy skin and big, blue eyes and red-gold hair zipped up into a dress the color of New Zealand. She’s the most stunning thing you’ve ever seen. She is fantasy made flesh, the unsung paradise of the South Island regions, just like TripAdvisor once bragged.“Mm. Yeah,” you say, like a bloody idiot.-A rambling introspection from Cormoran's POV
Relationships: Matthew Cunliffe/Robin Ellacott, Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 38
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

Leda Strike believes - _believed_ \- in monsters.

The past tense stings your mind, still. Time has eroded the raw pain that used to beat in your bones when you thought of your mum; now, it’s merely a dull roar, an ocean of memories that pulse in and out, just waves on the shore. When you were a kid, Leda dusted sugar on the window sills for the fairies on All Hallow’s Eve. She had a rotating array of crystal necklaces that she wore everywhere but to her photoshoots. She named you after a Cornish giant, who, legend had it, once constructed an island in the middle of a vast, frothing sea. Sometimes, when it rained in Cornwall, she stripped down and danced naked in the backyard, her head tipped to the open sky, her bare body an offering to all the creatures who looked down at her in longing. 

(But maybe for Leda Strike, who tracked wet grass into the house more often that not, who cried when a designer told her off for being too big for the sample sizes, who stabbed herself with the sharp ends of things when she thought you weren’t looking, even though you always, _always_ were - maybe monsters were easy to believe in. Maybe fairies and giants and crystals were just an easier alternative to the parade of men who promised they’d love her forever, right before they jettisoned themselves out of her life for good. Maybe for Leda Strike, the most mythical creature in the whole universe was a truly faithful man.)

Your mum was fascinated by the concept of antipodes, spots diametrically opposed to any given location on the Earth. In Year 3, you swiped a world map during a geography assignment and tacked it clumsily above the toaster in your kitchen. You enjoyed the fact that the cartographer had scribbled _here be dragons_ over pictures of sea monsters interspersed throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. In the mornings, Leda liked to examine various cities on the map while the kettle whistled merrily in the backdrop and she spread strawberry jam across her toast. _Look Cormoran._ Her acrylic nails paused above a smudge in New Zealand. _Papatowai is the exact opposite point of the world to us, right here. What do you think the people in Papatowai are doing right now?_

You checked the clock, aware of the time difference. _Probably on the way to the boozer. Do they have pubs in Papatowai?_

 _I’m sure. Everyone in the world likes their poisons, don’t they?_ Leda ruffled your hair, smearing jam on your forehead. Somehow, she thought of antipodes as a matching set, a predestined pair, the geographical equivalent of soulmates. 

_He’s my soulmate, my match,_ she’d later say about Jeff Whittaker. She was using heavily by then and her eyes were glassy and shadowed more often than not. The sharp angles of her collarbone stuck out disconcertingly, accentuating the hollows of her body, making her look like a creature of light and shadows. _I love him so much. One day, you’ll understand. One day, you’ll feel this way about someone._

After Jeff murdered your mum, you never looked at a world map again.

\-------

“What do you want from me?” Robin asks.

Your head snaps up. “What?” 

The sun is streaming through the windows of the café, haloing her strawberry-blond hair. In the light, her blue eyes are so clear, you imagine you can see straight through them, to the blood pumping in symphony through her veins, to the muscle mass of her brain, to the razor-sharp wire of her thoughts, her hopes, her wants. For one stupid breath, you open your mouth to tell her -

But she’s already talking over your imagined words. “I mean, what were you intending when you hired me?”

“Well -”

“Because I’ve been working really hard,” she cuts you off again, her lower lip trembling. “This job is important to me.”

“I know,” you say. “I know you have. I’ve noticed.”

A tear dribbles down her cheek. Tears used to be your Achilles heel, something Charlotte seized upon and exploited to great effect. Watching her cry used to feel like struggling with a sickness - you got light-headed, dizzy and short of breath - until the only cure was kissing each tear away. Charlotte’s crying jags usually led to the two of you tangled up in bed together, ensnared in the dark threads of one another’s passion. You’ve long been inoculated against Charlotte’s particular brand of sickness, but Robin’s is something entirely different. 

“I thought we got on well together, that we were a team.”

Your mind, long conditioned to hoard juicy tidbits of information from potential suspects, latches onto the fact she feels you get on together, that she thinks of the two of you as a unit. _Robin and Cormoran. Strike and Ellacott._ “We do. We are.”

So, why did you say you’re going to hire another partner then? Someone ex-police,” she demands, furiously swiping at her cheeks. 

_Ah._ “OK,” you spread your hands. “Listen. You might not like what I have to say, but just let me get it out.”

Robin raises her chin, as if steadying herself for a hit, and her determined expression causes you to miss a beat of breath. It’s been like that a lot with her lately. She’ll knock on your office door, or slip into a new accent, or wear a new blouse, or sit too close to your desk, and for a second, you can’t breathe properly. It’s annoying. It’s also not totally unexpected. After all, she’s gorgeous and you’re a red-blooded male and physical reactions are basically biologically predetermined at this point. It’s Darwinism … or something. Or is that survival of the fittest? Anyway. You just have to make sure you don’t do anything stupid, like accidentally kiss her.

“You’re about to get married to someone who hates you doing this,” you explain. “I need a partner who can share the long hours, give up the weekends at a drop of the hat. I wouldn’t ask that of an assistant, but I demand it of a partner. I’m not going to ask you to ruin your marriage for the sake of a job.”

Robin’s eyes narrow. You scramble for an alternate solution. 

“If this is something you’re serious about, the agency will pay for surveillance classes and we can take it from there, maybe you can learn on the job -”

“Yes,” she interrupts. “Yes, that is what I want. This is what I _love_.”

You try to ignore the way your pulse stutters at the word _love_. From the little you know of love, it is destruction. It is war. It is landmines detonating underneath your feet, the bottom third of your leg exploding, shrapnel and eviscerated bits of skin and muscle clogging the air. You loved Charlotte, and she’d ripped what was left of you to shreds. You craved her presence, even when it meant her fingernails raking down your cheek or ashtrays thrown at your mouth. You loved your mum, Leda, too and the relationship was just as volatile: drugs snorted on the sly, a string of men with vulpine smiles and dirty hands, designers and creative directors stomping around the flat with minuscule clothing in tow, the press camping outside your door, pictures of your face underneath headlines that screamed about Jonny Rokeby’s bastard boy.

But Robin makes you feel … content. She brings back happy memories of _before_ , things you thought you lost, things like that world map above the toaster and bedtime stories about Cornish giants and Leda with her strawberry jam. You’ve never known someone to make you feel the way Robin makes you feel, like together you can just be still, like it’s the two of you against all the monsters out there. You’ve always grown tired of people before - even Charlotte - but despite sharing an office for the past few months, and now road-tripping up to Devon, you don’t think it’s possible to spend too much time with Robin. When she’s close to you, everything is better. Even the ache of your phantom leg isn’t so bad. 

“OK.” You purse your lips. “Who am I to stand between a woman and what she loves?”

Robin shoots you a watery smile, sniffling. 

“Cheer the fuck up and eat your sandwich.” 

Her smile deepens. “It’s not a good sandwich. Too much onion.”

“No such thing.” You reach over to grab it from her plate. You already know what a life with Robin Ellacott would look like. It would be you swiping her sandwiches. It would be her slipping onto the sofa next to you, her arms wound round your neck, asking, _bad day, then?_ It would be a true partnership, two people coming together to build that Cornish island way out in the middle of the ocean, because even giants need partners.

Except that Robin is marrying someone else.

You already know the crush isn’t just a crush. You already know that she’s a different kind of landmine to the fucker that blew your leg off at the knee. You already know that she holds greater potential to destroy you than a full-scale war and the loss of your limb ever did.

\-------

The thing most people don’t realize about antipodes is that, because the Earth’s surface is over 70% water, very few locations have land-based antipodes. The exact opposite point of most places usually ends up somewhere in an ocean. You know, _here be dragons_ , and everything.

Cornwall is one of the few exceptions, with an opposite point just over 500km away from shore. Essentially, it is furthest away in the world from a town called Papatowai, New Zealand. You google the place after Leda dies, and the Internet spawns hundreds of pictures of lush rainforests, sweeping coastlands, endlessly rolling green meadows and an obscene amount of waterfalls, everything awash in green. You close the browser after a few minutes worth of scrolling. Real as Papatowai may be, it’s also a fantasy place, somewhere you’ll never go, never actually see. Your world is here in London, where everything is a kaleidoscope of grey concrete, black, moonless nights spent staking out unsavory neighborhoods and crimson stains left behind after people are stabbed or shot or otherwise dismembered in morbidly creative ways.

You don’t think about Papatowai for a long time. You hardly ever see the color green, anyway.

Charlotte calls to tell you she’s well on her way to becoming Mrs. Jago Ross, and you respond with maturity, first smashing a vase above the filing cabinet in your office and then making an impressive effort to drink The Tottenham dry before Robin rescues you. You spend the next morning with your head in a wastepaper basket, avoiding the broken shards of pottery dotting the floor, until Robin’s text reminds you that you’re supposed to be at Vashti, checking out the dress shop where Lula Landry spent her final hours before she jumped - or was pushed - off her own roof. Jury’s still out on whether it’s a suicide.

 _Nearly there_ , you text Robin back, still throwing up in the bin.

You arrive at Vashti twenty minutes late, hungover and hurting, your mouth crammed full of an egg and cheese bagel, and the first thing you see is Robin trying on a dress. It’s green, falling to the floor in silken folds. You thought you’d forgotten those photos of Papatowai, but looking at Robin, you realize you’d only shoved them down into the hollow recesses of your psyche that still hope for better things. You never really forgot about that far flung island. Now, you know you never will. This image of your assistant trying on a green dress in Lula Landry’s favorite shop will be branded onto the back of your eyelids until the day you die. 

You swallow, swipe at the crumbs clinging to your jacket and stare shamelessly, drinking in the curves and flares of Robin’s body. Under the fluorescent lights of your office, the shape of her body is only hinted at, but now it’s an explicit landscape from which you can’t tear your eyes. Draped in clinging viridian, she’s so damn beautiful, so utterly exotic, a world removed from the rumpled bed head look you’re currently sporting. Maybe you’re still drunk. That’s probably why the thought of antipodes lights up in your consciousness, even as the longing hits you like a physical blow, sinking into your spine, knocking you to your knees, leaving you gasping for air. You blink to clear the hazy _want_ from your expression. 

Maybe, it’s just been too long since you last got laid.

“Well, what d’you think?” Robin asks, cutting off your confusion at the knees. (Knee, singular.) She’s twisting and turning in front of you, even more beautiful close up, all creamy skin and big, blue eyes and red-gold hair zipped up into a dress the color of New Zealand. She’s the most stunning thing you’ve ever seen. She is fantasy made flesh, the unsung paradise of the South Island regions, just like TripAdvisor once bragged.

“Mm. Yeah,” you say, like a bloody idiot.

 _I could fall in love with you,_ you think, and you’re immediately horrified by the thought, shoving it back into that place in your psyche where you don’t dare venture, where you keep your tragedy and trauma and memories of your mum and thoughts of Papatowai and now this too, your desire for Robin Ellacott.

\-------

When Robin finally answers your call, you’ve bypassed _frantic_ and gone straight to _incensed._

“We’ve just been sent a severed _limb_!” You roar into the mobile. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for fucking hours! You’d better bloody well keep your phone with you and pick up when I call, alright?”

There is a pregnant pause before Robin says, very subdued, “Yeah, alright.”

Your anger dies so abruptly, you know it was never real in the first place. This response is unlike Robin. You were expecting one of her quips. Maybe she’d snap at you for treating her like a child. You’d ask whether she was too young to go for a pint, and you’d end the night together at The Tottenham, before shuffling off your separate ways. You’d crawl to the office, back into your camp bed, chucking your prosthetic on the floor, and stare up at the ceiling, thinking of her. 

“You alright?” 

“Yeah,” Robin says, still in that same strange, dead voice.

You grip the cell harder, truly worried now. “Okay.” In the background, you can hear the tinny strain of The Pogues. It makes you feel a bit better, knowing she’s at Coach and Horses. They always play The Pogues at that pub. “Meet tomorrow at 10 to go speak with Liz?”

Another pause. “D’you know,” Robin mutters, slurring slightly, “I’m just really not feeling up to it.”

You’re already pulling on your coat, the cell mashed between your shoulder and your chin. A pit opens up in your stomach. Something is very wrong. If anything’s happened to her - 

“Cormoran?”

“Okay. Whatever you need.” 

It’s only five blocks to Coach and Horses, but you half jog, half stumble your way there, pain needling at the place where your prosthetic meets your stunted knee. You curse and limp, limp and curse, preoccupied with getting to Robin as fast as possible and tearing apart anyone who may have hurt her. When it comes to Robin, not a single fictitious attacker is spared the wrath of your vivid imagination.

 _I’ve been loving you a long time / Down all the years, down all the days,_ Shane MacGowan’s vocals bump and grind through the pub’s busted-up stereo. You push past a bloke in leather and a girl with an alarming number of septum piercings before you spot the tosser circling Robin’s table in the corner. “Mind if I wait with you?” you hear him ask her.

“No. You can’t.” 

Robin raises her head at your approach. You’ve never seen her look so bad before, her eyes blotchy and puffy from crying, her hair tangled, her blouse rumpled and stained. You remember her immaculately pressed skirt and sleekly fitted jumper from that first day in the office, the way she wielded her cheerful professionalism like a shield, everything about her appearance screaming, _neat, clean, dependable._ Fear sinks fresh talons into the fleshy membrane of your heart.

She takes a giant gulp of wine as you slide in the chair opposite her. “How did you find me?”

“Give me a little credit; I’m a private investigator.” 

You’re hoping for a laugh, but she doesn’t crack a smile, doesn’t even look at you. It’s like the Robin you’ve spent the past few months with has vacated the premises, leaving behind a plastic shell of herself. You’ve seen it plenty of times before: in Afghanistan, with soldiers who went into shock after seeing friends gunned down next to them, in suspects you’ve interviewed who couldn’t grasp the fact someone they’d once loved was no longer a living, breathing spirit, but a hunk of rotting flesh. You should be used to this by now. It shouldn’t scare you as much as it does.

“Robin?”

“Whatcha need?”

You raise an eyebrow, trying for gentleness. “I don’t need anything.”

She reaches out for her wine glass with her left hand, bare fingers flexing. _Bare_ fingers. You shelve the explosion of ecstasy for later, when you can parse through what this new development means for you. Right now, your immediate concern is Robin’s emotional state. 

“Where’s your engagement ring?”

“Oh.” Robin examines her finger as though the lack of jewelry is startling new information. “Turns out Matt was cheating with Sarah.”

There’s a table between the two of you - her in the booth, you in the opposite stiff-backed chair - just a few feet of space really, but there’s something trembling and desperate in that space, a forcefield of energy pulling you together.

“What a complete fucking moron,” you say carefully. 

“Yeah.” Robin nods, lips twitching. There’s a beat and then she finally shatters, her stoic wall crumbling, her body hunching over with silent sobs and you _hate_ Matt with a sudden stab of viciousness that startles you, because it’s deeper and darker than the rage you feel for Brockbank or Laing or even Whittaker; it’s a hatred that’s primal and pure; you hate him for what he’s done to Robin, for how he’s betrayed her in the most intimate of ways. You’re reaching out before you can censor yourself, your hand shooting out, palm upturned, fingers unfurled like a question mark. 

But Robin being Robin, she’s already wiping her face and rearranging her features into a more appropriate visage. “I didn’t want to fall apart,” she whispers. 

“That’s alright. You can.”

“Cormoran, I have to tell you something. But I don’t want you to think of me differently because of it. Alright?” She skewers you with her gaze. Awash with tears, her eyes look even bluer.

You can’t speak, so you nod. Robin traces a fingernail around the groove at the bottom of the glass. “It’s not the fact that Matt cheated,” she confesses, “it’s when he did it. Something - something happened when I was at Uni. It’s why I dropped out and went home to live with my mum for a bit. Afterwards, I had problems.”

Somewhere, Whittaker is sliding the needle into your mum’s arm. Somewhere, women are being targeted. Somewhere, they are dying. Here, the Pogues are still playing over the stereo. _I took shelter from a shower / And I stepped into your arms._

“Afterwards, I played dead and he got scared and ran away. It was twenty bad minutes in a whole lifetime, but I survived, and I’m still the same person I was before.”

You hold your jaw so tightly you’ll have a headache later. Something black and predatory sucks at your mind. “I know that. But that’s a really … a horrible thing to have happened to you.”

Robin looks away. “He was wearing a gorilla mask, but there were these little white patches of dead skin around his ears. My evidence got him put away for rape and attempted murder.”

Your rage will swallow you alive, you think. It will not even spit out your bones. 

“But when I was home, I couldn’t leave my room for a long time. I couldn’t even see Matt. That’s when Matt and Sarah - when they -”

This time, she’s the one to blindly reach for your hand. Her fingertips coil around yours. Charlotte’s nails were manicured, ladylike, showcasing a gentleness entirely at odds with her rabid personality. Robin’s are brittle and bitten down to the quick, nothing ladylike about them. 

You know Robin gets called _beautiful_ a lot - some of your clients are a mouthy lot who have no qualms remarking on your partner’s appearance - but they call her _beautiful_ in the same way that paintings and vases are beautiful, not beautiful in how she really is, like this, like hangnails and her hand in yours and tears in her eyes as she tells you how she survived. She survived the thing that tried to kill her, just like you did.

You swallow. “I can’t promise that nothing bad won’t ever happen to you again. But I can promise that I’m here for you, no matter what.”

If you thought your rage for Robin’s attacker would swallow you whole, it’s nothing compared to the way her eyes devour you. You will not survive this fresh onslaught, you think helplessly. Your Army training taught you how to measure an opponent, how to weigh potential advantages and weaknesses, but in your entire arsenal of tools, there is nothing that can withstand the full force of Robin Ellacott’s green-blue gaze, of the way her skin feels against yours.

\-------

It’s later, lying in your camp bed, listening to the drizzle on the skylight above you, that you think about how trauma drove the both of you to different extremes. At Oxford, you gravitated towards someone with a family even more dysfunctional than yours. After you lost your leg, emotional upheaval was a familiar kind of comfort, far preferable to the physical pain that dogged you day and night. Robin did the exact opposite by seeking out shelter, shacking up with a person who would never challenge or champion her, but who would keep her safe.

And look how things turned out for the both of you. _Pitter patter,_ the rain sounds above your head like distant gunfire.

When you fall asleep, you dream of the two Poles. The North and South Poles are worlds removed from one another - antipodes by definition - but with matching vistas of ice and snow, blanketing the landscape as far as the eye can see.

\-------

“Robin!”

You storm into the little house in Ealing with clenched fists and your blood pressure rising, some small piece of home décor crashing in your wake.

“Strike,” Matthew mutters a sullen greeting from the hallway, trying for conciliatory and missing by a mile.

You ignore him. All your attention is fixed on the woman in front of the kitchen sink. Backlit by the midmorning sun, her hair is a flame. She’s soft and smooth and rounded with perfect curves, except for the jagged divot in her forearm, where the knife bit close to bone. There’s a deep cut across her cheek, and it breaks your heart a little, to imagine a blade slashing towards her, to remember that she enlisted Shanker for backup. _Why didn’t she call you?_ But you already know the answer to that. 

“You went to Brockbank.” You’re shaking with a maelstrom of feelings, the only one of which you care to identify is anger. You want to drag Robin down into the little plot of freshly churned earth you can see through the window and throttle her for scaring you so badly, then kiss her breathless because you thought you lost her and you’ve wanted to kiss her since always. 

“That’s right.” Robin crosses her arms. 

“Now he’s fucking run off and Wardle thinks I sent you in after him. Laing’s a cripple and Whittaker’s not even in London and that makes Brockbank our number one suspect. A suspect we now can’t find, thanks to you! You’ve jeopardized our entire investigation!”

The investigation is not the problem. The investigation is far from the problem. 

“He was raping those little girls, Cormoran,” Robin hisses with equal venom. “What was I supposed to do, just stand by and watch it happen?”

“You were supposed to let the police do their fucking job, Robin!” 

Her eyes shutter. “I had to do something,” she says, the fight falling out of her. 

You love her for wanting to save everyone. You hate her for wanting to save everyone but herself. You love her for her quick mind, for her ironclad determination, for her heart as big as the Cornwall countryside, for her ability to throw herself headfirst into any investigation, to slip on any accent, to drive fearlessly through any field. You love Robin Venetia Ellacott, your antipode, your world match. You think you always have; it just took your mind a while to catch up with what the rest of you already knew.

But you can’t scream feelings in her face, not with Matthew still hovering in the hallway like a ghost, and she chose to get back together with him, and that’s fine - even though it’s not, really - because it’s her choice, and it’s always been her choice.

It was her choice to walk headlong into danger. But this is your choice, too. 

“We’re done.” You’re still shaking, maybe worse than before. “We’re finished.”

Her mouth twists. “You don’t mean that.”

But you’re already backing up. Matthew is smirking under the kitchen door frame. _What would it take for you to let her go,_ he’d asked you in the hospital after Robin had been attacked. You’d taken the question at face value, explaining that your partner knew how to manage the risks, even as his subtext rankled at you. 

_What would it take what would it take what would it take_

_One day, you’ll understand. One day, you’ll feel this way about someone,_ Leda Strike whispers from the grave.


	2. Chapter 2

Lorelai is warm and soft, curled up into your side like a pill bug, her hair tickling the underside of your chin. It smells pleasantly fruity. Her flat in Clapham doesn’t smell of fruit, but it’s pleasant too, with couch cushions that strike a nice balance between being too squishy and not firm enough, huge, south-facing windows, kitchen drawers full of organized utensils and cabinets that never seem to run out of Weetabix. 

You like eating Weetabix for breakfast. You like the bright and airy flat. You like Lorelai. 

You don’t know why you can’t sleep.

The problem, you decide, easing Lorelai off your chest, is that it’s hazardous to assign any one person too much meaning in your life. Look what happened to Leda, to your mates in Afghanistan, to Charlie. Loss is inevitable. And Robin’s not dead in a quarry or buried under a blank headstone in Whitechapel, but she’s still irretrievably gone, isn’t she? 

_What are you thinking,_ Lorelai had asked you earlier at the party. Her hand had brushed yours as you stood amid the twinkling fairy lights strung out on the patio. _What’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours?_

You’d taken a long swig of your wine, wishing it was harder stuff. Matthew was calling Robin through the open kitchen window and her eyes were lost, even as the rest of her was confidently striding through the space, guests parting for her in waves. _Manchego?_ You heard her offer a girl with dark curls and an unnaturally high, smooth forehead. Even in that drab dress, even in the dimly lit space, Robin was the brightest thing at the party, her shine dulled only by the rock on her finger. 

_Just thinking about Billy. Case stuff,_ you told Lorelai.

She playfully smacked your arm. _I know that face. It means you’re hiding something._

 _That’s what being human means,_ you’d replied, lightly enough that it didn’t come out sounding like a direct jab. Really, it was a hit on you. You spent your nights with Lorelai, trying not to sully her bedsheets with your longing for another woman. You spent your days in the office, trying not to look too long at Robin or speak too much about anything beyond work, lest you accidentally slip and reveal something you can’t take back. 

Love is a dangerous word to throw around. Charlotte had used it cavalierly enough that it had lost its bite in your last few months together, but you know that with Robin on the receiving end, the impact would be explosive, a fucking Molotov cocktail.

 _I love you._ What would it prove, anyway? At a certain point, the truth will just feel worse. It’ll scare her away, maybe forever, and then your business will be forever fucked, because you won’t find anyone you enjoy running things with, the way you enjoy running them with Robin, because she’s special, because she understands you, because she makes you better, because she’s ruined you for anyone else.

At Oxford, you learned how to say, _thank you for your hospitality_ in eight different languages, yet you haven’t been able to say a single true thing of late. You know that the Greek translation of _antipodes_ means _with feet opposite_ but you’ve only got one foot, haven’t you, and anyway, your world match marched her two feet down the aisle and married someone else. Lorelai was the one to choose you and you don’t know why you can’t feel anything more than mild affection for her.

 _Cormoran,_ Lorelai mumbles, thrashing herself awake next to you.

_I’m here._

_Do you remember at the party, when you said we were good together?_

You do. It had been right after Matthew pulled Robin in for a hug, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head. She’d smiled up at him. It hurt worse than seeing the dim, shuttered look in her eyes. Maybe it was the proprietary nature of the gesture that stung you. Maybe it was because Matthew got to touch Robin anytime he wanted - little thoughtless, throwaway gestures - while you agonized over every second of skin-to-skin contact. You still remember how her fingers felt in yours the night she’d told you of the attack. You still think about it. You dream about it in technicolor. 

_Yeah,_ you reply, wary. You shouldn’t have said it. You know you shouldn’t give Lorelai false hope that the relationship between you two could last, but you’d been so miserable in that instance, and besides, you’ve always had a little bit of a self-sabotaging streak.

_Well, I have something to tell you too._

Your stomach seizes with foreboding. Lorelai’s dark eyes are huge and vulnerable. She interlocks her fingers with yours, and you’re transported back to that night at Coach and Horses, the strains of the Pogues blasting through the stereo, looking into Robin’s ocean eyes across the table, feeling the weight of her grip crash into yours, as hard and fast as if she was drowning and you were the buoy that kept her afloat.

_I … I think I love you, Cormoran._

You blink, watching Robin’s lips move and hearing Lorelai’s voice. You blink again and Lorelai comes back into focus; Robin was never really there. You know this. You know she’s curled up in bed next to her husband in a flat in Ealing. You don’t know what kind of psychotic break you’re having. You lower your eyes and blink and blink, trying to think what to say.

 _Did you hear me?_ Lorelai asks.

 _I heard you._

Lorelai gets out of bed and pads into the kitchen, the stifled sound of her sobs drifting back to you. You stare up at the ceiling, guilt churning in your gut. You debate going after her, but it would only make it worse to offer something you can’t give. 

Your heart’s not here anyway; it’s in Papatowai, New Zealand. It’s in a flat in Ealing.

\-------

_“Don’t,”_ Robin warns, eyes flashing, as she stomps up the stairs in three-inch combat heels. “Don’t say anything.”

“Wasn't going to. It’s good, by the way,” you respond, taking full advantage of the obvious opportunity to look her up and down (she wants you to, in this getup). Under the long, black wig, her blue-green eyes are striking, her skin paler, her cheekbones more pronounced. Beneath a studded choker, she’s swathed in layers of frayed leather, her sinfully long legs accentuated in fishnet stockings. The change away from bright, polished, professional Robin is jarring, but your partner’s always been able to slip into accents and characters the same way she seamlessly slipped through the Robin-shaped hole in your defenses. “And you are?”

“Becca the friendly goth.” Robin sinks onto the sofa opposite your desk. Her lipstick is the color of blood. She smiles at you, all mouth. “I really think I’m making headway with Flick. She’s invited me to a party at her place tonight.”

You grin back, dissolving any lingering tension between the two of you. “Go on. What’s Becca’s favorite band, then?”

“The Cure.”

“How about her favorite album?”

“Head on the Door.” She sticks her tongue out, as if warning you not to test her.

“Favorite song on that album?”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Push. No question.” She launches into a tuneless rendition - _Push him away / no no no / don’t let him stay / He gets inside to stare at her_ \- that has you grinning wider. 

“Good thing you’re a P.I. mate. Keep your day job. You can’t sing for shit.”

“Oi.” She sits up straighter, fiddling with the end of her choker. “Is that a hint of jealousy I detect, Mr. Cormoran Blue Strike? Are you jealous of my natural musical ability?”

Her eyes are dancing. It’s the light in her face that has you rising to your feet, overriding all your basic instincts, and moving around your desk to sit clumsily at her side. Her expression alters at your proximity, smoothing into something that straddles _fear_ and _need_ and _desire_. You’re close enough to breathe her breath, if you could still breathe.

“It’s true you are a woman of many talents, Robin Venetia Ellacott.”

She stares at you and you stare back, both of you deeply interested in what the other has to offer, both of you skirting the edges of all the huge and ineffable things between you. 

Robin clears her throat, color rising in her cheeks. “It’s Cunliffe now, actually.”

“Oh. Right.”

Still, she doesn’t move. “You never used to call me that.”

You’re confused. “Cunliffe? Or Ellacott?”

She clears her throat again, hands fluttering up near the choker. Nervous tells, you realize. You can’t remember the last time you saw her display visible nerves. “My full name. It sounds nice when you say it.”

You want to kiss her so badly it’s a physical ache, worse even than the constant dull pain of your prosthetic rubbing against your amputated stump. But … not like this, not when she’s Mrs. Matthew Cunliffe. Because you’re hers, whether she chooses to call herself Becca or Venetia or Robin, but you want all parts of her, not just the leftover bits Matthew doesn’t understand or is too stupid to embrace.

You watch Robin’s throat move as she swallows. Her blood red lips part.

“Be careful tonight,” you force yourself to say.

She cups your cheek, fleetingly, sending sparks dancing across your skin. “Always,” she says thickly, and it comes out sounding like a sacred vow.

\-------

Robin is running, Jimmy hot on her heels, screaming obscenities with every step.

Robin is _running_ , legs pumping, arms swinging like metronomes at her sides. Her breath is a series of gasps in her ears as she takes the street corner sharply, but Jimmy is gaining on her. She puts on a burst of speed, Jimmy’s hand stretching and curling into the empty space as if to grab her. The nighttime scenery of Amhurst Road flashes by as she scans for an escape route: brick shops with colorful awnings, skeletons of trees silhouetted against street lamps, abandoned bikes tied to posts, blank windows gaping like toothless mouths, no one around to save her. 

_I’m going to tear you apart. Slowly, while you’re still alive, you fucking bitch,_ Jimmy snarls.

Robin’s eyes are huge, terror dilating her pupils into black pits. She doesn’t look back. She lifts her knees, desperately lengthening her stride. But Jimmy has twenty pounds of muscle on her, and her legs are going to give out, and even as she tries to zigzag, he tackles her. The impact sends her clattering to the ground, gritty shards of asphalt digging into her back. _Gotcha,_ he pants.

Flat on her back, she looks up to face her killer. A blink, and now Jimmy is Donald Laing, a knife in his hand. Another blink and he is Brockbank, a horrible leer carving his face into a rictus grin. _Any last words?_

And now Robin is fighting, kicking out with her legs and screaming with all the leftover air in her lungs. She’s screaming for you. She’s calling, _Cormoran,_ even as the knife slices her collarbone and her skin bubbles and warps, peeling from her shoulders in blackened strips, dark blood sluicing away - 

You wake up covered in sweat, your forehead stuck to stray papers on your desk. You disentangle yourself, smearing perspiration on every nearby surface before realizing you must have nodded off while reading up on Freddie Chiswell. A browser on your computer is open to an interview one of the soldiers in his battalion gave to _The Sun_ , dated prior to Freddie’s death. The screen blinks, emitting a faint blue glow. It’s twelve past ten at night.

 _Fuck,_ you groan into the silence.

Your heart is still screaming at jackhammer pace, like you were the one running from an imaginary attacker. Your body is a tube of toothpaste squeezed too tightly, all the fluids forced up to your head. Nothing new, but you can’t feel your legs. 

The aftermath of the dream is sticky. It clings to your skin, wreaking havoc in your head. You’re reaching for your mobile and punching in Robin’s number before you can analyze whether or not it’s a good idea. (It’s definitely not.)

“Hi, Cormoran.”

“Robin.” Spoken aloud, your voice sounds panicky, full of air. Now that you know Robin’s alive, you work to tone it down to a more appropriate decibel. “How are you?”

“Uh.” Robin pauses, something tender and tenuous in her voice. You’re still too shaken to pick up on it properly. “I’m fine. I was just about to go to bed. What’s going on?”

You gulp for air. “Can you come to Chiswell’s in the morning?” _You died in my dream,_ you don’t say. _You died calling for me and I didn’t come._

During the Shacklewell Ripper case, you worried anytime she went out at night. You were terrified the darkness was going to swallow her up, so you phoned her all the time - just to check in - and maybe that was when the final self-preservation barriers you erected came crashing down. You would have done anything to keep her from becoming another one of the maimed and dead women you knew, so you’d fired her. You were willing to give her up if it meant you could also keep her safe. 

Another pause, the air shifting and crackling. “Cormoran, I -”

Static. 

“Hello? Robin?” Your heart is hammering again.

Another voice, a male one, roaring into the mobile, _Now’s not the fucking time, alright?_ It takes your traumatized mind longer than it should to recognize Matthew’s irate drawl, to piece together the puzzle of Robin’s pauses and your late-night call and her husband’s rage.

“Sorry about that.” Robin’s back on the other end of the line again. 

“Everything alright?” you ask carefully. Your feelings for her are an oil spill. It’s your fault you’ve let them overflow. Now, you’re left straddling an ocean of emotion, holding a match and waiting to catch fire, wondering if you’ll both go up in flames.

“Fine,” she says, even though she’s clearly not.

“Sorry,” you say helplessly. “I shouldn’t have called so late.”

“It’s okay.” Her voice hitches, like she’s about to cry. “What time shall I meet you?”

“How does nine thirty sound?”

“Grand.”

“Robin,” you start again, not sure what you’re going to say, but there’s a sharp intake of air from her and a click as she hangs up.

\-------

“Bluey. I want to get back together,” Charlotte says.

“Don’t call me that,” you counter.

When you’d dressed earlier this evening to go to Chiswell’s gala (Robin doing up your tie for you), Charlotte hadn’t yet been crawling across your consciousness. You’d had no idea that you’d be ending the night at your least favorite restaurant in Mayfair, sitting opposite the woman you hate most in all the world. You should have guessed Charlotte would be at that damn gala. After all, you knew she ran in the same social circles as the Prime Minister. Still, when she’d accosted you on the stairwell, her hand a vise on your wrist, you’d been too taken aback to say _no._

Assume what you will about Charlotte soon-to-be Ross, but she’s never been boring.

“Bluey,” she repeats. Her eyes glimmer with challenge. You’re wearing a tux; she’s in a column of dark silk that does nothing to disguise her pregnancy. The sheer expanse of tanned, toned skin on display is staggering. You’ve never seen a heavily pregnant woman wear a backless dress cut down to her navel before, and nor have the other men in the restaurant, judging by their openly appreciative stares.

For Charlotte, beauty is power, and she reigns supreme. If she could cram the whole world between her jaws she would’ve. (And then swallowed and asked for seconds.)

The first time you ever saw her was at a party at Uni. She was sitting off to the side by herself, all the girls too jealous to speak to her, the boys too intimidated. Emboldened by a blanket of gin and bolstered by the fact you possessed a very specific set of social skills, courtesy of your nomadic upbringing, you sauntered over. You don’t remember what you talked about that first night. You don’t remember the sex in the early hours of the morning either, but you remember days later when Charlotte confessed that you were just a tool to make her current boyfriend jealous. From then on, the meeting you’d thought of as kismet, was forever tarnished by her vengefulness and desire to destroy everything in her path. You forgave her for that, and a million other tiny little hurts in between, because she was stunningly gorgeous and you were big and burly and thought you didn’t deserve her. 

But Charlotte Campbell didn’t merit forgiveness. She’d dug her manicured fingernails into your life and yanked, _hard._ Fast forward fifteen years later, and look where she left you: shredded from the inside out, your heart a pulped mess, wishing you could scrub the memory of her from your skull with peroxide and bleach.

Charlotte bites into an olive, the neckline of her dress gaping. Even pregnant, she’s somehow managed to lose weight. “So. What do you say?”

“To what?”

She swallows. The features of her face are so symmetrical, you could take a ruler to them and they’d line up perfectly. Isn’t that what they say true beauty is? Face symmetry?

“To us. Do you want to be with me?”

You meet her gaze head on, unwilling to show any weakness. “No.”

Her mouth curves. “Don’t kid a kidder, Bluey.”

The waiter approaches your table, a serviette folded atop one arm. His face is split in a friendly, deferential smile, but his eyes are wide when he looks at Charlotte. He’s probably never seen a woman of such staggering beauty in his restaurant before.

“Good evening. Can I interest you in any of tonight’s specials?”

“Do we look like the kind of people interested in the fucking specials?” you snap. 

Charlotte covers her mouth with a napkin as the waiter retreats, looking harassed and upset. There’s amusement written in the set of her shoulders, but she’s mastered the expression in her face, tucking it away behind her mask of haughty, gorgeous indifference. “Don’t be rude, Bluey.”

“I told you not to call me that. And don’t talk to me about rudeness. You’re six months pregnant with Ross’ baby and macking on me.” You’re simmering with anger. You hate this restaurant and the woman in it with you; you hate Mayfair and all of London and most of all, you hate Matthew fucking Cunliffe.

As if alerted to the direction of your thoughts, Charlotte blots her lipstick with the cream-colored napkin, tosses it on the booth and asks, “Does this have anything to do with the redhead at the gala? The one in the green dress.”

You work hard to keep your face impassive, but you know you were too slow to hide your reaction. Charlotte sees it too. Her eyes light up with the perverse joy of someone who’s been probing for weakness and has uncovered a vulnerability to attack.

“Who?”

“Oh, don’t play coy with me. Robin, the redhead. Your partner. The one married to Matthew Cunliffe,” Charlotte says, showing her hand all at once and giving up the pretense that she hasn’t paid your life any attention since jetting off with Jago Ross. “I saw the way you looked at her at the gala.”

You sip on the gin in front of you. 

Here is the thing. You’ve met Charlotte’s family before, at various Thanksgivings and Christmases. She’s got you beat for money and class plus dysfunctional family members (the latter of which you didn’t think possible, but there you go.) Her father, Anthony Campbell, despised you on principle. Of Charlotte, he expected marriage to the right sort of well-connected man, a brood of well-behaved children, weekends in Majorca and decades of photos from benefits and charity dinners all lined up on the mantle and propagating the lie of familial bliss. Charlotte would rather have swallowed razor blades than make her parents happy. You know because she’d told you. Therein had lain the bulk of your appeal.

She’s trapped by her money and beauty and status, but you have no intention of lying back down in that gilded cage with her. Most likely, you won’t get out again. You’ll never breathe fresh air again, never track down criminals again, never watch Robin pore over witness accounts and point out inconsistencies with the glee of someone on a singular mission to save the world.

“You seem well informed on the minutiae of my life,” you say finally. 

Your former lover leans over the table, closer to you. “She’s _married,_ Cormoran.”

“Yes, I’m aware, thank you. I was a guest at her wedding.”

“So, are you just going to wait for her indefinitely, then?” Charlotte’s grin is all teeth. "How predictably disappointing of you.”

You drain the last of the gin and slide the glass back on the table. “Jealousy doesn't look good on you, Charlotte. You know I wouldn’t have done it for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the literal Greek meaning of 'antipodes'


End file.
